


No Battle's Won In Bed

by Thursday_Next



Category: Blood Feud - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: M/M, Treat, sutcliff_swap 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 03:22:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thursday_Next/pseuds/Thursday_Next
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now that the feud has been put on hold the remembrances creep in at unguarded moments such as this, like unwanted guests at a feast.</p><p>Thormod remembers a winter he spent with Anders, and begins to see Jestyn in a new light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Battle's Won In Bed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [osprey_archer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/gifts).



> Many thanks to Carmarthen for the beta.

"Wake early  
if you want  
another man's life or land.  
No lamb  
for the lazy wolf.  
No battle's won in bed.“

– The Havamal

 

It is the amber haze of the fire that sets him to remembering. Thormod's not one for losing himself in thoughts of things past, has never felt the pull of the homing-hunger. In truth, he has hardly allowed himself to recall that long winter in Svensdale these past few years. At first it was a bitter thing to think back on what had seemed sweet, now lost. And then there was the blood feud, the score to settle, and all his thoughts were only of the violence he would do to Anders and Herulf when he and Jestyn found them.

But now that the feud has been put on hold by Khan Vladimir's command, now that his purpose has been taken from him, the remembrances creep in at unguarded moments such as this, like unwanted guests at a feast.

 

He minds Anders as he was, a stocky boy with untamed hair that seemed only the more unruly as he grew. The games they played, learning to fish in the stream, acting out raids with the other boys from the village.

He recalls his eighteenth winter, fumbling under furs, Anders showing him what he had done with Agnar's daughter.

"And she put it between her thighs, so," Anders said, the hair of his burgeoning beard tickling Thormod's neck as he rubbed himself against Thormod.

Anders was keen on Agnar's daughter and talked of her often. He was not the only boy or man who thought of her so – and not the only one who had been between her thighs, Thormod would wager. Thormod only grunted at the mention of her name. He had no interest in her or any of the local womenfolk. Oh, one day he would wed, of course, if he lived long enough to tire of adventuring, would beget children to carry his name, a son who he would teach to fight. And he would enjoy the begetting well enough, he had no doubt; he was not without the usual urges of a man. But it mattered not to him who his wife would be. He spent no time sighing after this maiden or that. It mattered more who would cross the seas with him, who would stand by his side in a fight.

Agnar's daughter knew all the ways to lie with a man without getting with child, which was as well for Anders and Thormod, seeing as the usual way of man and maid would not work for them. Some things Thormod thought of with distaste, when Anders described them, but then when they buried themselves beneath furs, their blood up as if from a fight, skin flushed with lust and sometimes with wine, then there seemed no shame in any of it. It was half a game to them, still, who were reckoned men by blood spilled but barely grown into their beards.

They rutted against one another, sucked and bit and pinched and pulled each other to completion. Anders grinned when they were done, well satisfied, although he would talk, still, of Agnar's daughter and her plump breasts, of when he would see her again. And then sleep would take him. Thormod was still and silent after, every time. It struck him that he was content, like this, sated and warm, with his shield-brother by his side.

 

They were chided, sometimes, by their mothers for laying a long time abed.

"No lamb for the lazy wolf, Cub," Thormod's mother would say, when he emerged sleep-rumpled from his sleeping place, or came in from the fields with grass staining his skin or his sark. It was all she would say, though, and he wondered often whether she knew what he and Anders had been up to, whether it was something all men did to while away the long winters when they had no wives and homes of their own, no pressing work. It was not the sort of thing he could ask.

It was a long winter but a happy one, filled with thoughts of the summer ahead, adventure in Ireland and beyond, perhaps even Miklagard like in the merchant's tale they'd listened to as boys, but always the two of them side by side, shoulder to shoulder. Thormod grinned to think on it.

And then Anders told him he was not coming.

 

This old hurt Thormod remembers all too well, and it is not something he wishes to dwell on, but the smoke from the fire stings his eyes and it comes back to him, all the same. The choking disappointment, the hot, sudden anger which overcame him, despite his best efforts to keep it in check. Above all, the bitter knowledge that Anders was not the man he had thought him, the man he had wanted him to be. That Anders had never wanted the things he had wanted, after all.

 

It had been but days before they were to leave that Anders had come, loping over the hill that marked the far side of Sitric’s farm. There had been no heaviness in his brow, no mark of regret, Thormod remembered that. The disappointment was his and his alone.

"It seems there's a fair wind for you," Anders said.

"For us," Thormod said, frowning.

"Ah. It was a near thing, but I'll not be coming to Ireland." He said it as though it was no matter. Thormod felt a chill in his blood, despite the fair weather. He found he couldn't form the question. Anders answered it for him anyway. "Edny is with child."

For a moment Thormod could not think who Edny was, or why the state of her belly should have any bearing on Anders' going. Then he recalled Agnar's daughter.

"Is the child yours?"

Anders shrugged.

"Like as not. So it's a wife and a raiding summer for me." He sounded not in the least regretful.

"So, that is how it will be," Thormod said, voice steady, and it was the last they said to one another.

 

He wonders now if Anders thinks of him at all. Other than thinking how and when to kill him. But the blood feud is set aside, although not by his own choosing, or Anders'. If they met now, with this truce forced upon them, they could be as they were before. His breathing quickens to think on it, his blood hot. But who is to say Anders would wish to?

It would not change that one of them must kill the other. He is not so low of a man that he would place an old lust, the scratching of an itch, above what is due to his father's honour. And besides, he is not sure that he could trust Anders not to put a knife in his ribs as soon as their thirst was slaked. 

It is dire luck to be dependent on the feelings of your fellow man, so they say. Thormod thinks he learned the truth of it that summer. He's been guarded ever since in his dealings with others. As a Norseman should be, he tells himself. He's had travelling companions, friends of sorts, even lovers, albeit the sort bought and paid for. But not one such as Anders was to him, however that might be named.

At least, not until Jestyn.

He looks across the fire and catches Jestyn's eye. Jestyn's eyes are on him often of late. There's something in it of worry, like his mother's eyes when he first began to accompany his father on summer raids. _Cub, mind you're careful,_ she would say, _and come back to me whole._ Jestyn has this look as if he'd like to say the same thing.

"You are afraid," Thormod says. He had not meant to speak, and Jestyn looks as startled by his speech as he is himself.

"Aye," Jestyn says at last, holding his gaze. "Perhaps."

"It is not the war."

"I am not afraid to fight," Jestyn says. This is true, as far as it goes, although Thormod suspects his friend hasn't the taste for battle that he has himself, as one born and raised to it.

"What then?"

"I fear you will seek out Anders and do something foolish."

He does not say _kill him_. Thormod's thoughts leap first to imagining himself in bed with Anders, rolling about, biting and laughing as they used to. That cannot be what Jestyn means. Jestyn has no reason to think there was anything between Thormod and Anders but childhood friendship. The blood rushes to Thormod‘s cheeks with a kind of shame. He does not like that Jestyn should know this of him, either.

But there is a kind of knowing in those grey eyes, all the same. They do not speak much, he and Jestyn, yet they know each other in a hundred thousand little ways that do not need words.

"I will not do anything foolish," he swears, and pokes the fire.

"I am glad of it," Jestyn says, and when their eyes meet again, Thormod wonders whether there is more yet he does not know about Jestyn.

He looks at the clean line of Jestyn's neck and finds himself wondering how it would taste. If Thormod ran his tongue and teeth over the milky skin, would Jestyn's breathing quicken and turn to soft grunts and ragged bursts as Anders' had done? He thinks with a sudden rush of blood, heady as a strong wine, that he would like to know, to discover all these things about him.  
Emboldened, perhaps, by the fire of the wine in his belly, he reaches a slow but steady hand across to close around Jestyn’s wrist. Jestyn’s nostrils flare and he looks at him, clear and unblinking, much as he had the first time they’d laid eyes on one another. There had been something between them even in that first moment, although not something Thormod had been ready to acknowledge. He’s hardly sure he’s ready to acknowledge it now. 

Jestyn’s wide mouth quirks in a quiet smile, almost an invitation, but Thormod stills. 

It is Jestyn who closes the distance between them, laying a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. It is a foreign feeling; Anders had never liked to do this. Jestyn turns his hand over, palm up, so that Thormod’s fingers brush against the small silver scar there on the underside of his wrist. He says nothing, but the meaning is plain: _I have come this far with you, I will not run now_.

Thormod lets Jestyn kiss his mouth again, reaches for him and pulls him close and lets the fire of Jestyn's touches, clumsy but sure, scour the memories of Anders from his skin.


End file.
